I found it better than AC too. I loved the setting, duels that felt quite authentic and the quieter moments like the Haiku. By that stage I was well and truly over AC though.
It was revolutionary in the least glorious way possible.
The grass.
I won't bore with the details, but one of the major issues you have, as a developer, is how much shit you can put into a level. More stuff = more draw calls on your GPU, More draw calls on your GPU = more work for the GPU and less available processing power for all the other stuff.
The grass in that game can be rendered to pretty much an infinite amount and is incrediably optimised.
It's crazy and it looks insanely good.